Recently, the use of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to locate and track various types of items has gained increased popularity. One reason for this increase is that the costs associated with manufacturing and implementing readers and tags employing RFID technology has steadily been decreasing. In addition, RFID readers and tags have been manufactured to be ever smaller for more densely packed RFID applications.
In conventional RFID applications, the RFID readers and tags typically move with respect to each other during the process of interrogation. Through this relative motion, multiple read attempts are often made by the RFID readers and eventually, a sufficiently high quality signal is obtained in both directions of the communication. Conventional RFID readers are thus typically designed to simply count pulses in a clearly delineated waveform received from the tags.
Problems sometimes arise, however, when conventional RFID readers and tags are maintained in relatively static positions with respect to each other. For instance, if an RFID reader is not positioned in a suitable location to receive relatively clear signals from a tag, the RFID reader will be unable receive any clearer signals because of the lack of motion between the RFID reader and the tag. As such, the RFID reader will be unable to obtain a correct read from the tag because each read will result in failure due to a weak signal or due to noise.